Purple and Grief. A poem.

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla you must count yourself lucky. You must offer her what’s left of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish you must put aside, and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed, her eyes moving from the clock to the television and back again. I am not afraid. She has been here before and now I can recognize her gait as she approaches the house. Some nights, when I know she’s coming, I unlock the door, lie down on my back, and count her steps from the street to the porch. Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper, tells me to write down everyone I have ever known, and we separate them between the living and the dead so she can pick each name at random. I play her favorite Willie Nelson album because she misses Texas but I don’t ask why. She hums a little, the way my brother does when he gardens. We sit for an hour while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been, crying in the checkout line, refusing to eat, refusing to shower, all the smoking and all the drinking. Eventually she puts one of her heavy purple arms around me, leans her head against mine, and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic. So I tell her, things are feeling romantic. She pulls another name, this time from the dead, and turns to me in that way that parents do so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something. Romantic? she says, reading the name out loud, slowly, so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel wrapping around the bones like new muscle, the sound of that person’s body and how reckless it is, how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

I am fascinated when people use the right color to describe an emotion or experience. The color rays are ingrained in our subconsciousness. Purple is the color of grieving. It connects us to the spiritual realms and to our minds. It gives peace and patience while going through the process of coming to terms with loss. It protects and comforts and explains to us while we are suffering through sadness.

"Color therapy, per se, is one of the most ancient therapies, stretching back into the mists of time. Researchers throughout the centuries have acknowledged the profound influence of color upon the physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Each color component of light has its own wavelength and specific qualities of energy capable of affecting the whole gamut of human emotions."

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